Many sports fans fantasize about how it would be to own their own team (especially O's fans). What would happen though if sports management became a democratic model in which fans were the owners?

Our friends across the pond are playing with that idea right now.

A Briton by the name of Will Brooks has created a site where he is pooling funds together in order to buy a team, but he is only putting down around 70 American dollars towards his goal. However, he has already over 33,000 other investors by his side. This team will also be as much theirs as his own, for he has a decree that all decisions on the club will be made through the team's site. The decisions would include hires, trades, etc. You could say that this would be a real-life fantasy sports team. It is so much more than that.

This may be a very popular way for communities to build and invest in ideas and projects of the future. I saw the same type of concept in Microsoft's PhotoSynth project, a mass of people and input are organized around a central hub in which the input can be used by the hub to build. Communities are already well established, and in many instances are well organized. It is just a matter of time until these communities are much more proactive and used to build real, tangible constructs (instead of just focusing on intellectual property). Facebook has unleashed their development platform and it would be great to see the wealth of quality information build a project based on mass individual support.